


zero determinant strategies

by nasri



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 17:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2396861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasri/pseuds/nasri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is his mistake, laid out so plainly before him, repeated year after year, decades of misunderstanding. In his delight to finally have another mind to which he could relate, Mycroft forgot that under Sherlock’s genius, he was still a child— children don’t lock themselves in bedrooms to be alone, they lock themselves in bedrooms to be found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	zero determinant strategies

**Author's Note:**

> A bit disjointed and self indulgent.

Mycroft understands school as a formality, a necessary twelve years, give or take, to prove to society that you possess the basic competence and patience to sit quietly in stuffy rooms and respond appropriately to authority. The content, from physics to Chaucer, is something he could easily absorb on his own. His teachers, middle aged and barely scraping by on thirty thousand a year, are glorified babysitters. Mycroft was nine when he came to accept that anything he truly needed to learn he could find in a library. Sherlock is far younger.

“I don’t want to go,” he says, fingers clutching the sleeves of his coat like a security blanket. He is six years old, his eyes are unnervingly blue, and Mycroft sighs.

“You have to.” He is holding his backpack, already packed with rulers and crayons and small, lined notebooks. “Everyone does.”

“What’s the point?"

“To learn,” he says, knowing it won’t be enough to convince him. Mycroft has been up all night, unable to turn off his incessant, persistent thoughts. He lay in bed for hours, listing every Latin adjective he could, conjugated to first and second declensions, verbs in periphrastic, _foveo, fovere, fovi, fotus._ He is not in the mood for questions.

“I can learn on my own.”

“I’m afraid the government disagrees.” Mycroft decides against mentioning homeschooling, as now is likely not the time. He takes Sherlock’s hand in his, relieved when small fingers finally clutch his own.

“You should run the government then, and I wouldn’t have to go to school.” Sherlock sounds almost resigned as Mycroft straightens the tie on his uniform and steers him in the direction of the front door.  

“Perhaps, one day.” He really needs to sleep.

—

Sherlock loves animals, and loves them dearly. When winter thaws just enough to turn to spring, he lifts Sherlock onto his shoulders— every year he is just a little heavier, slightly unbalanced— so he can peer through branches at the beginnings of bird nests made from twine and straw. Though Mycroft always remembers their location without much assistance, Sherlock inevitably draws maps on grid paper, with little blue x’s marking each tree with a nest.

In April, they walk along the fence that lines their property, inspecting the ground and following Sherlock’s carefully drawn map. And every year, there is at least one whole, untouched egg at the base of a tree trunk, which survived the fall only to be abandoned by its mother. The eggs are infertile, pushed out of the nest as Robins are wont to do, but Sherlock’s delight in finding them keeps Mycroft’s lips sealed against this little biology lesson.

Instead he carefully gathers them into a flannel lined cardboard box and sets them under a heat lamp in Sherlock’s bedroom. Even if the eggs could hatch, it would take more than Sherlock’s late night vigils to breathe life into their tiny embryonic lungs. But still he tries, and Mycroft holds him close, a month later, when he buries the egg with tears in his eyes.

Despite his annual brush with heartbreak, Sherlock still collects his eggs, in hopes that one day they will hatch into something beautiful. Mycroft fears he will never learn.

—

Religion is the only battle his father wins— decided by his mother’s white flag before shots were ever fired. They attend church every Sunday in a local whitewashed parish, mercifully nondenominational. Mycroft finds the whole tradition vaguely trite, but his father insists, bless him, that nothing is more important. His mother goes along with the whole charade in the fashion of a tourist— vaguely interested but amused. His father never mentions the fact that his family consists of two unapologetic atheists, soon to be three. Instead he takes solace in obscure verses of the Bible and household salvation, one man’s faith can save the souls of his wicked blood.

Church is something Mycroft sits through with lazy indifference, fourteen years of practice honing his ability to appear deceptively attentive. It’s relatively painless, until Sherlock turns seven and Church becomes a weekly exercise in restraint. He shifts in his seat, scoffs loudly at pronouncements of “God’s plan,” shies away from the well meaning touches of elderly women— “peace be with you, lad.”

Sherlock is eyeing the large, wooden cross at the center of the parish, and Mycroft can see the criticism forming in his mind. In an attempt to keep them all sane, Mycroft reaches for an empty offering envelope, kept in a small wooden container on the back of each pew, and a stubby pencil. As neat as he can manage on the flimsy cover of a hymnal, he creates a set of binomials and writes out every individual step as he solves it. His scribbling has attracted Sherlock’s fickle attention. Once he is finished, Mycroft writes another set, and hands the pencil to Sherlock.

This works well enough for the better part of a year. His father watches disapprovingly, though the sentiment hardly lingers, especially once his mother joins in. She silently points out errors without giving Sherlock the chance to check his work, disguising her laugh at Sherlock’s outrage with a dignified cough.

Sherlock quickly outgrows algebra, so Mycroft starts on a bit of basic calculus. This takes far more whispered explanation, and attracts many more smacks on the arm with his father’s rolled up bulletin, but this too, Sherlock outgrows.

Sherlock is ten when Mycroft first scribbles a chemical equation in the margin of a note-laden envelope, and Sherlock truly begins to shine. They sit hunched in the pew, grinning through splayed fingers and using blunt pencils to balance an equation of sulfur and ozone.

“I’m going to be a chemist,” Sherlock announces one day, when the obligatory hour of worship is finished and they are once more free to walk to the parking lot.

Their father waves it off as a phase, but Mycroft doesn’t doubt him.

—

For all of his deductions, calculations and reasoning, Mycroft knows he has only inherited a fraction of his mother’s intellect.

Sherlock complains while sprawled across Mycroft’s bed, tracing a Fibonacci grid in the air, that she is painfully, nauseatingly, unapologetically boring. She retired at thirty and now she gardens, subscribes to parenting magazines, and follows tennis. “Tennis!” Sherlock shouts, appalled.

Their mother’s genius is well hidden under layers of social skills and somewhat bafflingly, affection. “She gave it all up for you, you know,” his father once said. “It” being her potential, endless and formidable. 

“There was nothing to give up,” she was quick to correct them. It was then that Mycroft realised that their mother’s brain would always be overridden by her heart. Though logically he knows the heart has nothing to do with her emotional intelligence, to him it feels like a completely separate organ, a function that he cannot even begin to comprehend.

Sometimes, the enormity of it haunts him. He fears caring so much while simultaneously worrying that perhaps he does not have the capacity to do so.

“Say it again?” Sherlock asks, as he shifts to rest his head on Mycroft’s thigh. He rarely needs explaining twice, especially with chemistry.

“Methane is the simplest molecule of the hydrocarbon compound.” Sherlock’s fingers scratch an arc into his slacks, one hundred and nine degrees, the bond angle of methane. Mycroft runs his fingers through his hair in silent acknowledgment, and Sherlock pretends not to notice.

Mycroft watches Sherlock’s eyelids flutter shut and thinks of all the things he would be willing to give up for him.

—

Sociopath: a misdiagnosis by a children’s psychologist who later receives the full force of their mother’s wrath for daring to suggest that her son is damaged. It was likely a mistake to have mentioned the teeth and claws and animal pellets that Sherlock collects— they are for experiments, found around the edges of the forest that surrounds their home. He never kills anything, of course, but what are a few leaps and bounds in the world of psychological medicine? They are thrilled to have him. 

The damage is done the second Sherlock presses his ear to the psychologist’s locked door, listening intently for his prognosis. Sometimes Mycroft thinks that he is far more eligible for the title that his little brother takes on so freely.

He remembers being seven years old and questioning the need for his attendance at family gatherings. His cousins on his mother’s side are enveloped in a constant competition, jockeying for position like racehorses, running for their vile grandparents’ attentions. They are shallow and helplessly predictable.

“You are not required to like them, but you must love them.” His mother once told him.

Mycroft found this all rather ridiculous. If a shared ancestry meant that he was expected to make monthly visits and pretend to listen and smile at stories of minor accomplishments then so be it— but never would love enter the equation. It wasn’t until Sherlock was born that he found he rather understood the concept of blood. 

Sherlock loves fully and unequivocally and to Mycroft, it serves as breathtaking proof of his misdiagnosis. He loves their cousins, their melancholy aunts. He loves sitting in the smoking room while their uncles discuss politics in low murmurs, arguments Sherlock never can make sense of (“these tariffs will be the end of us, mark my words”.) To Sherlock, love often equates honestly, a trait that is not highly valued at his grandparents’ dinner table. His brutal conversational tactics (“you probably shouldn’t go to university after all if you struggle so much with your rudimentary algebra, it shows a lack of quantitative intelligence”) are not well received by their extended family. As Sherlock gets older, they maintain their carefully constructed facades of normalcy, however each word is tinted with less affection and the bite of resentment. 

Sherlock notices the narrowed eyes and pursed lips all at once. Hours later when he crawls into Mycroft’s bed, he is fighting back tears. They don’t speak— they don’t need to, because Mycroft can see it too, and it disgusts him. He curls a strand of Sherlock’s hair around his finger, downy soft and frizzy from the summer heat, as Sherlock attempts to match their breathing. He would match their heartbeats if he could, a singular perfect system.

“I don’t understand.” Sherlock says finally.

“They are not worth a single second of your time.” Sherlock breaths through his nose and Mycroft works his fingers down to the nape of his neck. “They are nothing.” He finds that he means it, more or less, he values their lives based only on what they mean to his little brother.

“Then what am I?”

Mycroft wants to tell him that he is beautiful and loving and kind; he wants to tell him everything he is and could be. “You are a scientist,” he says instead, and Sherlock grins against his collarbone, smiling for the first time since they arrived at their grandparent’s estate that morning.

“You never have to lie to anyone, Sherlock. If they don’t appreciate your honesty, they are unworthy of your time.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer so Mycroft traces molecular structures against the skin of his back. “Never pretend with me.”

“I won’t.” He whispers into his neck.

“Good.”

—

The day Mycroft leaves for university, Sherlock browses his emotional pallet and decides on anger. He locks himself in his room after a few well timed door-slams, and refuses to make an appearance even when the car is warmed up and ready to leave. Mycroft decides to leave Sherlock to his sulking, and promises himself that he will call on Saturday.

“He’ll get over it, dear,” his mother assures him with a soft pat on his cheek. “All little siblings cry when their eldest leaves.”

Mycroft can’t help but notice that Sherlock hasn’t cried once— not when he got his acceptance letter, not when they set a move-in date, not even the week before, when he packed a majority of his belongings into two suitcases. Sadness was replaced with blind, unforgiving anger— disbelief at being left alone for something as trivial as an education. He does not pretend to be an expert in matters of the heart, though he likes to think he knows Sherlock better than most. He trusts her, he’ll get over it.

He almost believes it the first time their mother makes her flippant excuses over the phone. “Oh he’s not even in the house, dear. Went out looking for specimens. He’s into insects now, brings back the most horrid things. I’ll let him know you asked for him, so he’ll be around next time.”

After her third anecdote— “why you just have the worst timing, Mikey, he drew a bath and you know how long he likes to linger”— Mycroft stops asking.

—

“Sherlock,” he sighs, leaning his forehead against the hard wood of his brother’s bedroom door. “This is my last night before returning to school, at least come down for dinner.”

Christmas holidays are a miserable game of hide and seek, with Sherlock refusing to be around Mycroft for longer than it takes for him to sneak biscuits from the kitchen. Their mother waves it off when he refuses to come down for dinner, calling it a phase, a spot of rebellion. Following her lead, Mycroft spends his days pretending not to hear Sherlock shuffle along the hallway, idly turning a page of his book when he passes by. It’s exhausting.

“Please,” he says finally. Mycroft bites the inside of his cheek, where he has carved a neat little gash with his canines. His brother is picking him apart, from the inside out.

“I have better things to do.”

“Fine. Continue to isolate yourself, I suspect that’s exactly what you need.” His teeth click with the force of his consonants, and Mycroft nearly flinches at his own tone. Sherlock doesn’t respond, Mycroft doesn’t apologise.

—

Mycroft feels seven years old again— like he is floating unattached, watching fish bustle around an aquarium with no concept of glass. Sherlock brought everything into focus. Words had meaning outside the abstract, with life wrought from his brother’s infant lungs.

Though he thinks perhaps this is worse than being seven years old again, because Sherlock is eighty-six miles away, made farther by the unforgiving fury of an abandoned twelve year old. Mycroft sits in class, listening to the asthmatic, rasping voice of his lecturer, and imagines.

He thinks of Sherlock, refusing to eat dinner until the garden spider in the window has finished wrapping its prey— a grain moth, _nemapogon granella_ , Sherlock would remind him— in its silken tomb. He thinks about his brother shying away from their mother’s touch, trudging mud through the sitting room, picking flowers and pressing the life from their glucose veins.

He thinks of Sherlock and the black bitter sludge of grief floods his arteries and threatens to stop his heart. Being seven years old was far easier— he didn’t know what he was missing.

—

While interning for the Department of Transportation, a position opens in the ranks of the Defense Logistics Agency. Mycroft, still in his third year at Oxford, fills out his application in green ink pen.

His first interview is laughably brief. Behind the table sits a young woman with kohl etched almond eyes, and two men like plastic copies of each other— navy blue suits, hair parted to the left, red pocket squares. He feels ancient sitting across from them, even as Clone Number One peers at his resume and says, “You understand, Mr. Holmes, it is highly irregular for the department to interview such a young candidate.”

“I’m not particularly worried,” Mycroft assures him. The woman scribbles down a note on her clipboard. 

They give him the job almost grudgingly, and he spends his last year in university working full time, only returning to campus to pass his exams.

Mycroft doesn’t go home for Christmas anymore— he is busy enough to convince his family that the time constraints of employment are all that keeps him in London. Soon enough he begins to believe it himself. 

—

He should have known better than to pick up the phone. “Mother, I simply cannot afford-”

“He’s your brother Mikey,” she huffs, resorting to nicknames and exaggerated frustration. “The least you can do is let him stay the weekend while he looks at schools.”

Mycroft rubs his thumb along the bridge of his nose, scowling at the small stack of paperwork that he has yet to begin. “My brother who has wanted nothing to do with me for years. We don’t get on-”

“You used to get on just fine,” she says, interrupting him again. Mycroft wants to dig his nails into the palm of his hands until he carves neat half moon scars into his skin. He adjusts the angle of his pens instead, lining them up neatly with the edge of his desk.

“Yes, I am aware.”

“Then you can use this as an opportunity to repair old bridges.” She has finally shown her hand. Mycroft sighs.

“And this is why you won’t bring him down on your own.” It’s a statement, not a question, and they both know it. He is sure she is smirking, miles away, just a touch too proud of herself.

“Take a day off, you could use the break, and show your brother around London.” The idea of seeing Sherlock again brings acid to his throat. He spent three years coaxing the old injury of their ruined relationship into something numb and dormant in the back of his mind. Now it threatens to open again, infecting every cell in his body.

“Yes, yes, alright. I really must get back to work.” He hangs up just as his mother shouts, “I’ll call with details!”

Her details include Sherlock’s train schedule, arriving in London at two ten on a Friday afternoon. He spots him in King’s Cross with little trouble. He is unwashed, weaving through the afternoon crowds with his shoulders hunched in a petulant slouch.

“Sherlock,” he greets. His brother eyes him wearily and doesn’t say a word. “You’ve grown.”

“People tend to, yes.” Sherlock’s voice is no longer high and breathy— he has all but waltzed through puberty, coming out the other side with protruding hipbones and a lazy baritone drawl. He wishes he had a chance to say good-bye to his little brother.

“Right. Let me be frank, for a moment. I am working every day you’re here, and while I told mother I would take one day off I simply cannot afford to right now. My position is precarious at best, and I’d rather like to change that. I will give you money for whatever you need, but I trust your ability to attend an open campus without imminent disaster.”

It is the truth, at least, partially. Mycroft would rather like to move up in his department, though more for the ease of work than anything strategic— he could do without the constant, menial tasks. His life at twenty-three is filled with mindless, unbacked ambition.

Sherlock smiles, barely, a small crease at the corner of his mouth. He refuses to look Mycroft in the eye, instead focusing on the dirty, tiled floor. “Are you sure about that?”

“Not in the least,” he says, steering Sherlock towards the curb so he can hail a cab. “But I’m certain that neither of us will tell mother, should anything unfortunate befall you.”

“Oh no,” Sherlock says, “we couldn’t have that, could we.” Mycroft pretends not to hear him. 

— 

Sherlock tumbles back into his life in the form of a phone call from a local police force, informing him that his brother has been brought in for underage drinking and contempt of an officer. Before the painful half hour it takes him to reach the dregs of Enfield, it never really occurred to Mycroft to worry. Sherlock is brilliant and resourceful and generally too cynical to be caught up in the criminal pitfalls of his peers. Apparently though, he has changed.

It takes one look for Mycroft to determine that the police were in fact a step or two behind the truth. Sherlock, though eloquent and poisonous as ever, spitting cruelty at the officer on duty, is most definitely high.

They do not speak until Sherlock is released and Mycroft turns the key to his flat with slightly more force than is strictly necessary. “What did you take?” He asks.

“Ecstasy,” Sherlock says, throwing himself down on Mycroft’s couch. “I don’t care for it. It’s bipolar disorder compacted into a pill. An hour ago I felt like I could fly, and now I am quite certain I cannot, but still I rather feel like jumping from the roof of your building.”

“I’d thank you not to.” Mycroft busies himself with finding a glass clean enough to bring Sherlock water. He really must hire a maid.

“You’re not going to lecture me?” He keeps his eyes closed, like it’s too painful to open them for more than seconds at a time. His fingers tap a lazy pattern against his torn jeans.

“I’m not father.”

“That’s never stopped you before,” he whispers.

“Would it change anything if I yelled about how you’re wasting a valuable opportunity or if told you how disappointed I was?”

“No,” he admits.

“Then why waste the breath?”

Sherlock’s eyes open a fraction of an inch, as he regards Mycroft with pupils blown so wide his usually bright eyes seem black in the lamplight.

“I truly dislike you,” he says after a while.

“Drink,” Mycroft tells him, holding out a glass of ice water. “It will help.”

—

Sherlock has never been a decent judge of humanity, but by the age of nineteen the scales have fallen entirely from his eyes and Sherlock’s beautiful energy rots under the weight of his peers. They are at once selfish and ignorant and cruel. So Sherlock becomes crueler.

Mycroft’s uninspired life begins once more to revolve around Sherlock— his toxic sun in constant danger of collapsing in on himself, a supernova progenitor. He is fairly certain the drugs are a phase, and treats it accordingly. When Sherlock pops up in police custody, he takes care of the matter with all of the grace and monetary encouragement that he can muster. Though these nights generally end with Sherlock plucking books from his shelves and hurling them half way across his flat, Mycroft thinks it’s better than the alternative of an ASBO and mandatory rehabilitation clinics.

Often, his job is as simple as stocking Sherlock’s fridge with food when he is away at class. He has to brush aside lab samples to find room for milk. Mycroft tends to remove the bacteria colonies from the toaster oven as well— not out of any true necessity, more because it drives Sherlock nearly mad every time he does it.

Occasionally, his biweekly trips to Sherlock’s flat— the most recent being a peeling two-room in Clapham— are rather poorly timed.

“What are you doing here?” Sherlock spits. He isn’t supposed to be home, in fact he has a double lab until well after two but of course that has never stopped him.

“As ever, I am concerned.” Mycroft pretends to look unbothered by Sherlock, half naked, draped across a threadbare sofa with a his customary cigarette burns decorating the arms and headrests like patches of black freckles.

He sets down the grocery bags and runs a finger along the nearest wall. It comes away coated in dust, grime, and a suspicious layer of orange-yellow powder.

“You complain all the time when I’m at your flat-”

“Destroying my flat,” Mycroft corrects him.

Sherlock ignores him. “And now here you are. I’m beginning to feel that there is no way out of this.”

“As is generally the case with family.” Mycroft watches as Sherlock holds up a hand and a flutter of brown and grey materialises at his fingertips. 

“Well you and I both know that’s not quite true,” he says with a sneer. Sherlock inspects the moth as it crawls over his knuckles and onto the soft skin on the back of his hand. His defensive anger falls away, replaced with what looks like affection.

“Training moths now, are you?”

“Don’t be absurd. I’ve been adding the extract from genista angelica flowers to soap and hand lotion for weeks, long before the eggs hatched. Syncopacma albipalpella live and nest in angelica shrubs, and the smell attracts them easily.” Sherlock drops his hand a fraction of an inch and the moth flies over his head to perch on the unfinished wood of his windowsill. “I went through all the trouble of breeding them, I hardly wanted to have to pin them down to study their wing movements.”

“How many are there?”

“Thirteen,” Sherlock says airily.

“In this flat?" 

“Yes, do be careful where you step on your way out. We both know of you’re rather heavy handed. No need to add my moths to your list of casualties.”

— 

His beautiful blue eyes are dull, lacking their usual bright intelligence. In a way, Mycroft understands his addiction. He imagines there isn’t much point, at this stage in the game. Sherlock has unlocked the mysteries of organic chemistry and the illusive rules of his much despised British education system. He flew through his masters and PhD, commandeering the lab at King’s College for a handful of years before lending his talents to the less precise science of hydrochloride salt, base, and water injected into the nearest unscarred vein.

Mycroft is sure that he will succumb to a similar fate should Sherlock one day decide to function as a fully independent and responsible member of society, no longer relying on his brother’s funds, influence or comfort on a weekly basis. Without Sherlock’s wellbeing as a goal in which to inspire his every action, Mycroft fears he will dissolve into something no more valuable than the sum of his parts— worthless.

“I’m still mad at you,” Sherlock breathes. He stifles a cough with a choked sound.

Definite respiratory infection, possibility of a minor esophageal peroration: not the symptoms of an addict who relies on injection alone. “I see you’ve become impatient. Snorting cocaine now, are we?”

Sherlock attempts to sneer, his eyes now sharp and loathing despite the dilated pupils.

“Honestly, you’re better off with the needle.” Mycroft gingerly reaches for Sherlock’s arm, inspecting his pale, bruised skin and the black and red track marks, scarred over the arching curve of a vein.

Sherlock wrenches his arm away from his grasp, and lies back on the floor. Mycroft knows that the unfortunate solution of fentanyl and cocaine, a challenge set by hundreds of overdosing addicts, is the only thing keeping his brother beside him. If he were at all capable of leaving, Sherlock would be out the door in seconds— it has been nearly two hours, more time than Sherlock has spent in his company for years.

At least, he thinks, it was he that Sherlock called. Likely, it was survival instinct. Still, Mycroft considers it a minor victory on the battlefield of his relationship with his wayward brother.

“Knock me unconscious again,” Sherlock grunts. His strung out visits don’t always consist of near overdoses and subdued delirium. Mycroft thinks he should likely welcome the calm while it lasts.

“You make it sound as if I was responsible for your state of consciousness the first time.”

“Aren’t you always?” he snarls.

Mycroft knows a rhetorical question when he hears one, and allows Sherlock his fuming silence. He pretends to inspect the blackened shadow of a rosebush just beneath the bathroom window, but out of the corner of his eye he is counting every unsteady breath, every rattle and rise of Sherlock’s chest to assure himself that he is still breathing.

“I don’t understand,” he says finally, a whisper against the tiled floor.

As Mycroft waits for him to continue, he thinks of all the words that could possibly follow. He doesn’t understand how he nearly overdosed, the chemical fallacy of fentanyl, perfectly measured to Sherlock’s seven percent solution, but still the effects were too strong, dangerous and sickening. He doesn’t understand how his beautiful chemist’s mind cannot solve the puzzle that on paper he could have balanced as a child in the hour it took mass to end, on the back of an offering envelope—C22H28N2O, how wonderfully deceptive.

“You were so _fake,”_ he bites the words out between gritted teeth, hateful and shaded with years of resentment.

Mycroft reevaluates, thinking of every condescending smile and halfhearted phone call that could possibly have stuck in Sherlock’s mind. December 18th of last year: a plea for him to make an appearance, lest Christmas dinners be once again a lonely affair with Mycroft drinking far too much scotch and his mother sulking over a Latin edition of Euler’s Foundations of Differential Calculus— “a woman must have her hobbies.”

“I thought,” he takes a breath like it’s painful, “they saw right through you, like I did. I thought they knew that you hated them. So I tried to be honest, to make up for your cruelty. Isn’t that so much kinder?” Sherlock’s voice deteriorates into a whisper. “And I never understood how they could be so blind, and you-” Sherlock turns his head, and for the first time in many years he meets his eyes, instead of the soft lines of his cheeks or the collar of his suit.

“Do you understand now?” Mycroft asks. “People are irrational. They want others to be interested in their children’s primary school achievements, not to highlight their intellectual shortcomings. Honesty is rarely met with reward, especially in our family.”

“Do you feel _anything_?” His shout is sudden and Mycroft nearly takes a step backwards, startled by the ferocity of a voice that seconds ago could barely produce a whisper. Sherlock is pushing himself up, turning to face him, watching his every move. His eyes are dancing along the seams of his suit, his fingers, his hairline, fast enough to blur into quicksilver— observing but coming up with so few connections, Mycroft can read it in every muscle. But Sherlock, Sherlock can’t see a thing.

The realisation hits him with a rather unexpected set of footnotes. Sherlock has been, since childhood, an open book, legible only to Mycroft and on the very rare occasion, one or both of their parents. It never occurred to him, with all of his brilliance and their shared genetic code that the translation only worked in one direction. 

Mycroft falls to his knees before him, reaching for Sherlock’s shoulders, hands pressing hard enough to bruise, and he shakes his head, just once.

“You never said goodbye to me,” Sherlock says, less an accusation than a rebuttal to Mycroft’s denial.

This is his mistake, laid out so plainly before him, repeated year after year, decades of misunderstanding. In his delight to finally have another mind to which he could relate, Mycroft forgot that under Sherlock’s genius, he was still a child— children don’t lock themselves in bedrooms to be alone, they lock themselves in bedrooms to be found. 

“I am so sorry,” he whispers, and Sherlock’s body is limp in his arms, the weight of his anger leaving him with no foundation to keep him upright.

“Are you, though?” Because even now, Sherlock cannot tell, cannot see through him, cannot read it in his shaking hands. Mycroft is sure for a moment that Sherlock can hear the damage it does to his ribcage, such a simple question: an incision down his breastbone, heart surgery.

He falls asleep, curled in Mycroft’s sheets, reciting every species of the class Insecta that he can remember. Mycroft wakes to the gentle dip of the mattress as Sherlock’s climbs out of bed, collects his coat, and slips out the door. Mycroft doesn’t stop him.

—

Mycroft returns home to a house he doesn’t recognise. Since Sherlock moved out, his parents have taken to remodelling, slowly, one room at a time. His mother now collects better living magazines to replace the parenting guides she had subscribed to in years past.

“It looks wonderful,” he tells her, eyeing brown patterned tile above the new speckled granite sink. She preens as if she had done the work herself.

“I’m glad you think so. Sherlock hates it, of course.” Mycroft snaps his head in her direction, immediately wishing he hadn’t. “He never has liked change. You remember when he was a child, every time we tried to get rid of old toys he would run out to the bin in the morning and sneak them under his bed while we were still asleep,” she says, idly straightening a pale green hand cloth.

“Sherlock was here?" 

“Only for a weekend, and barely that. In on Friday night, out Sunday morning. You know how he is.” 

Mycroft makes a noise that he hopes passes for noncommittal.

“He’s better,” she adds, as an after thought.

Mycroft has never mentioned Sherlock’s drug habit to his parents. He has worked carefully to cover every arrest and pay his fines. He knows Sherlock only comes to him for money, and he simply cannot imagine a way his mother might have found out, considering the fact that she has seen Sherlock in person less often than Mycroft himself. He briefly toys with the idea that his mother is completely aware of his addiction, but decided against intervening. It would hardly be uncharacteristic.

As if she can read it on his face, she turns to him, laying a hand on his forearm. It is rare for Mycroft to be on the receiving end of this particular trick; he finds it rather unpleasant. “I know I was a bit hands off when you were children.”

It is his manners and nothing else that keeps Mycroft from snorting in disbelief. As a child, Mycroft had solid, unwavering boundaries— homework, dinner (vegetables included or he could sleep in the kitchen chair for all she cared), bed at eight o’clock sharp, please’s and thank you’s for every request, no matter how small. Once Sherlock came along, their structure withered and fell to his chaos leaving Mycroft as his only chaperone. 

“I was never sure what to do with you, Myc.” He scowls at the nickname, but she continues. “You were just so,” she pauses and Mycroft awaits the term Sherlock dreaded as a child. “-different. I thought maybe a strict hand was the way to go, but honestly I don’t think it made any difference at all. You were right determined to turn out this way my love, nothing I did could have changed that. You were an independent little boy, your father used to say you set your own bedtime.” Mycroft raises an eyebrow and his mother chuckles. “Sherlock was just as different, and I was just as unsure. But he wasn’t alone like you were. He had an older brother. You can relate to him in ways I never could.” 

Present tense. Mycroft nods, aware that the proverbial cat is out of the bag. “I’m trying,” he says.

“Oh darling, I know you are. You two are just as similar as you are different. Sherlock was determined to be Sherlock. He never did like change,” she repeats.

— 

His hair hangs a few inches too long, matted, curls more like ringlets in the humidity. “Sherlock.” He stands for a moment, framed in the doorway, his usual coat abandoned in the rare heat wave, replaced instead by a ratty T-shirt that nearly hangs off one shoulder, displaying raised collarbones. 

Sherlock doesn’t respond, instead he walks forward, deceptively steady on his feet, until he’s close enough to curl his fists into the collar of Mycroft’s dress shirt. He pushes him backwards, and Mycroft concedes every step until Sherlock has him against the wall, pinning him with red-rimmed eyes and bared teeth. He looks feral.

He steadies himself for violence, taking deep calming breaths, knowing that no matter what it is Sherlock has come here to do, he will let it happen without a whisper of protest. More than anything, Mycroft is tired. He has forgotten what it feels like to get a full nights sleep, and this at least, he is sure Sherlock can read in the lines around his mouth, his swollen eyelids. 

Sherlock hardly appears to be breathing as he pulls Mycroft closer and rests the top of his head against his chest. His hands are still fisted in Mycroft’s shirt as he sinks against him. Without a second thought, Mycroft’s arms are around his shoulders, holding him upright.

“I thought you might still be angry with me,” he murmurs into Sherlock’s hair as his body begins to shake with silent tremors. It has been weeks since he lay recovering from an overdose on Mycroft’s bathroom floor.

“I’m always angry.” Sherlock doesn’t loosen his grip, and Mycroft doesn’t let him go. Sherlock feels as light as he did as a child, when he would sit on his shoulders and peer into birds nests, rarely heeding his brother’s warning to look but not touch.

Sherlock’s legs finally give out, and Mycroft lowers them both to the floor.

“You are not alone,” he reminds him, because he knows now what Sherlock is missing. And finally when his breathing is back to normal, Sherlock twists his body to face him, graceful and lean, and puts his hands on either side of Mycroft’s face.

Mycroft’s fingers find Sherlock’s wrist, and they wait, eyes unmoving, watching only the minuscule contractions of dilated pupils. They count together; a last, final check, biological consent.

Sherlock kisses with his eyes open as if he cannot bear to miss a second of movement, colour, shadow against pale skin. Mycroft keeps his eyes closed, lest he opens them to find himself alone, in bed, aching for the remnants of a dream. Sherlock’s tongue glides against the seam of his lips, uncharacteristically hesitant, as if the hands twisted through his hair aren’t proof enough. Sherlock gasps into his mouth, and Mycroft imagines him trying to steal the oxygen from his lungs, breathe him in, convert him into something poisonous. 

Mycroft presses their foreheads together, whispering his brother’s name through chapped lips.

“Should I-“ 

“No,” Sherlock says between kisses, infinitely more chaste. The tip of his nose is cold as it brushes over his cheekbone. “You should stay right here.” His eyes look fever bright, and Mycroft’s rebuttal dies in his throat.

“I-” he begins, breathless.

“I know.”

—

Mycroft is watching the analogue clock on his wall— with every tick of the second hand, a year passes by. Sherlock’s rattling breaths take weeks, his soft, pained gasps are months long. His eyes are open, half-lidded and bright. He is not watching the clock, he is watching Mycroft.

“Chess?” He asks, finally. “Or perhaps Rummy?” It was Sherlock’s favourite card game as a child, their father has yet to ever beat him.

“I can’t concentrate enough for that.” He sucks in oxygen between his teeth like it’s paint fumes. 

Mycroft nods, and brushes his lips against his temple. “Tell me what I can do.” His skin tastes like salt and something bitter, toxic. 

“What if you can’t fix this?” He asks.

Mycroft shifts beside him, slipping an arm under his neck and pulling him closer until the bones of his ribcage expand and collapse against Mycroft’s side. “You’re not broken, Sherlock.” He entwines their fingers, inspecting the black lines of Sherlock’s nail beds. He reminds himself to scrub them clean in the morning. 

“How would you know?” The implications are clear enough, and he smiles against his cheekbone. What if you’re broken too, is what he means to say.

“Then what does it matter?” He answers. It makes no difference how broken they are, if their jagged edges fit together to create something whole.

—

They don’t talk about boundaries or morality or, goodness, definitely not legality. Guidelines of the human condition have rarely bothered Mycroft; he cares little for pleasing anyone other than Sherlock, and Sherlock doesn’t have much interest in pleasing anyone at all.

When Sherlock sinks into his sheets, whispering a frustrated, “thirty six days,” Mycroft does not tell him to stop undressing. He doesn’t concern himself with the moral implications of his fingers running circles on the soft skin of his inner thigh.

“You’re doing well,” he assures him, but Sherlock cuts off any further compliment with a single look.

“I relapsed.”

“You are human.” It is difficult for Sherlock to hear, even harder for Mycroft to admit. It is inconceivable and contrary to all he knows about biology that his exquisite brother should fit the same template of endothelial veins and synapses. He presses a kiss to the protruding edge of his hipbone.

Sherlock’s breath catches between his teeth, and Mycroft knows he is thinking the same thing. “Detoxing will be easier, this time.”

“It’s never easy.”

Mycroft’s fingers creep down his sternum. “Don’t put words in my mouth,” he chastises gently. Sherlock rolls his eyes, Mycroft smiles.

“Sleep,” he whispers against Sherlock’s lips. He leans forward, attempting to pull Mycroft back down but he is standing before he has the chance to kiss him again. “You need it.”

—

Sergeant Gregory Lestrade’s file comes across Mycroft’s desk during an intelligence operation targeting an international drug ring operating in London. On paper, he has little else but a six-year career in narcotics and nearly nothing to show for it, save a few promotions and a handful of fond colleagues.

He seems like the lesser of many evils to introduce into his little pet project. Naturally, Mycroft and his team would plan, prepare, and analyse while Scotland Yard risked their men for the good of the country— at least that is what he tells him, and Lestrade seems the type to believe it.

Lestrade deals in people, not dead bodies. Living, breathing, addicts, flawed and failing and lost to society. He takes one look at Mycroft, and his eyes narrow. Mycroft is not certain what Lestrade sees in him, but he is sure that he doesn’t like it.

“Here to take a case off my hands?”

“I’m here to request your assistance, in fact. If you perform well, it could do wonders for your career.”

Lestrade grits his teeth. “I’d be a shit DI.”

“Likely,” Mycroft agrees. He would undoubtedly be put on homicide cases, murder victims and lifeless eyes. If Lestrade is going to be good for anything at all, it will be the living. “But isn’t that generally the case?” He concedes.

Lestrade doesn’t respond.

—

Sherlock is feather light across his lap— it is worrying to the same degree that it is comforting to have him near by, to feel his spine through his dressing gown. He raises his hand and lazily presses it against Mycroft’s eyes, until he can see nothing but orange lamp light through the gaps in his fingers.

“You’re not paying attention to me,” Sherlock says, though Mycroft can hear that he is smiling.

“I’m always paying attention to you.”

“Well that’s just not possible.” Sherlock slides his hand down to his cheek, along his jaw line, ending with his fingers wrapped around the back of his neck.

It is though, in a way Sherlock can’t possibly fathom. He has been a feature of Mycroft’s subconscious since the day of his birth, a constant, humming light that refuses to diminish no matter how dark his thoughts turn. All roads lead to his selfish, brash, absolute terror of a little brother, not that he ever minded.

“I never lie to you.”

“Well you just did,” Sherlock points out, nuzzling the soft bit of skin beneath his ear. “And you told me Santa Claus existed.”

“That hardly counts. I was under oath-”

Sherlock kisses him. He never does play fair.

—

“You’re just doing this to piss me off,” Lestrade says, arms folded, watching as Mycroft makes his way around his new office (he half expected him to refuse the promotion out of spite) and flicks through every file, paper, and scrap he can find. He is admittedly doing it, in part anyway, to grate on his nerves. In reality, he has time to spare and Sherlock has been testing homemade bug bombs in the attic.

When Mycroft doesn’t answer, Lestrade rolls his eyes. “A psychologist would have a field day with you.”

It took less than a minute for Lestrade to look Mycroft up and down and find him irreparably wanting. Mycroft no longer bothers to act polite or charming or even threatening— Lestrade sees him as something hollow and incomplete, but only because he hasn’t met Sherlock.

Mycroft turns to looks at him, and flashes a bemused smile. “Yes, I imagine one would.”

His fingers brush over the front of the current case file, which has lain closed, hastily, on Lestrade’s desk since he walked through the door.

“Hey,” Lestrade begins, slamming his hand down over the manila cover. “That’s classified.”

“Oh I’m afraid not,” Mycroft says, sliding the file out from under his grip. “Nothing is classified to me.”

It is a simple story depicting a jewellery robbery turned murder when the young woman who worked behind the counter was stabbed twice in the chest. It is a rather public case, with a wealthy family pushing a handful of wrongful death suits and pressuring the police force by getting the media into an uproar.

“No CCTV,” Mycroft says, glancing down the report. “You ought to speak to the security guard a second time.”

Lestrade snorts. “Get the fuck out of here, Holmes.”

“I’m sure your forensics team will have it in their report within the week, but his wounds can only be self inflicted. Rather textbook, I’m afraid. Best of luck.”

It’s another two weeks before Mycroft finds a reason to snoop through Lestrade’s office again— this time it’s a rather lovely idea he had while Sherlock was shattering dishes on his floor to study and sketch break patterns.

“You were right,” Lestrade says, as Mycroft peers at the picture frame hung above his desk.

“That sounds like it physically pained you to say aloud.”

Lestrade snorts, and Mycroft adjusts the frame. “I have a brother.”

“You can’t fathom how little I care, mate.”

“You are a rather terrible DI.” Lestrade holds his gaze, but doesn’t disagree. “And I have a brother.”

—

“You work too much.” Sherlock’s lips are warm against the shell of his ear. His breath is unfiltered cigarettes, Mycroft prefers clove.

“You have too little to do,” he says, absentmindedly rubbing his hand along Sherlock’s thigh. They have been officially living together for little over six months, much to their mother’s delight. Sherlock confines his experiments to the second bedroom and Mycroft tries to keep work separate from play. Sometimes Sherlock’s messes spill into the kitchen and Mycroft’s intelligence files end up spread across the duvet. It’s a work in progress.

Sherlock has been growing more and more restless as the novelty of their relationship and his newfound sobriety wears off. Mycroft has offered him countless job opportunities, but Sherlock always refuses— out of pride or disinterest, he isn’t quite sure.

This time, though, he is certain the price will be right. “I think I might have found you a position.”

Sherlock is primed and ready to object, but Mycroft silences him with an open mouthed kiss. “It’s unpaid.” He doesn’t argue, but then again his attention seems rather fractured, his eyes now focused on the curve of Mycroft’s lips.

“It would involve a bit of consultant work for the Met.”

“Does one of your disciples require help closing a case? Stretching for a promotion, are they?”

“Hardly a disciple. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m afraid he despises me.” Mycroft runs his tongue along Sherlock’s bottom lip. “And he’s already got the promotion.”

—

Lestrade meets Sherlock on a Wednesday, with his single condition sent via email to Mycroft’s desk: Sherlock comes alone. So Mycroft works until nine that evening and takes a town car to his flat to find Sherlock sprawled across the couch with an array of manila folders spread out along the coffee table. There is the beginning of a web pinned to his living room wall— his newly painted living room wall— with photographs connected by red and yellow threads, woven around the tops of coloured drawing pins.

“It went well.” It wasn’t very much of a deduction, but Sherlock kisses him anyway, pressing his teeth into Mycroft’s bottom lip, deep enough to leave an indent but not hard enough to bleed. Mycroft would love nothing more than to carry him straight into the bedroom but Sherlock is gone with a kiss to the corner of his mouth, already lost in old cold cases.

Mycroft doesn’t mind. Sherlock is smiling.

—

It is months before Mycroft has an excuse to visit Lestrade again. For a while, they work under a silent agreement in which Sherlock functions as an unwilling messenger boy between them. Though, as Lestrade now has the delightful experience of being the only other person of interest in Sherlock’s life, he isn’t about to let that continue. He files a request for access to a coroner’s report, picked at random from a list of open investigations, and takes note of Lestrade’s lunch breaks.

“I thought I wouldn’t have to put up with you anymore, now that Sherlock’s around.” His feet are kicked up onto his desk, and for a split second he looks embarrassed.

“Unfortunately there remain many problems that even my brother can’t solve.” He slides the approval form across the desk for Lestrade to squint at. He prints off the report with relatively little fuss and when he stands to hand it over, he looks Mycroft in the eye.

“At least he lives with you,” he says.

Mycroft can’t work out the context of his statement quick enough, and Lestrade is talking again before he has a chance to respond. “It’s more than most addicts are wiling to do. If they’re living with family, it’s always a good sign.” He nearly smiles. “A great sign. You must be really proud of him.”

“Are you making conversation, Detective Inspector?”

“Why not? Turns out you and I have similar backgrounds.” He wrinkles his nose a bit and looks away. “That came out wrong. Similar interests, addicts and all.”

“Only one addict, I’m afraid.”

“One’s enough, mate.” He says. “One’s enough.”

—

Sherlock is never more at his mercy than when they are kissing. He wonders if he should be flattered, or if he would be this way for anyone, should they be allowed the luxury.

“Take a look at it for me,” Mycroft whispers. Sherlock’s eyes are half lidded, his breath coming in short staccato bursts.

“This is blackmail.”

“Coercion, maybe.” He kisses him again, Sherlock groans into his mouth and grabs his wrist, attempting to pin him down.

“Bribery,” he mumbles against the skin of Mycroft’s lips.

“Oh no, that would imply that I don’t intend to follow through with my advances.” Sherlock still kisses with his eyes open and it makes Mycroft’s stomach turn with affection and arousal and something inbetween the two. “I’m only asking for a favour.”

Mycroft is an efficient leader because he knows very well how to delegate. Sometimes the government, or more specifically MI5, run into problems that only he can fix. Lately, he has other means.

“I have plenty of cases from Lestrade.”

“I am aware.” He kisses him hard, demanding, controlling in a way he knows makes Sherlock’s stomach twist.

“Fine,” he breaths, hastily unbuttoning his shirt with unsteady hands. “But next time you want something you have to play fair.”

All’s fair in love, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

—

Lestrade sees a single edge piece to the puzzle of their relationship. Mycroft can never quite work out what piece it is— whether he sees his blatant adoration, or the rather unhealthy codependency, or the guilt, strong, overwhelming. Whatever it is, like the bit of the devil he originally saw in Mycroft, he makes no secret of it.

Mycroft is surprised the first time he receives a text message from Lestrade saying simply _, He’s fine._ Sherlock had gone after a suspect on his own, and ended up in a police standoff with a knife to his throat. The exchange ended so quickly, Mycroft was only informed of it after the man was in custody and Sherlock was back at the Met.

He picks up Sherlock on his way home, and the moment they step through the door he presses him against the wall and kisses his way around his neck, sliding his tongue along his skin, intact. There is a tiny knick just below his jawbone, barely a scratch, but Mycroft sees it for what it is— a narrow escape. Sherlock’s breath hitches as he nips at the cut with his incisors. It’s meant to hurt, and Sherlock knows it.

“Don’t you ever-“ Mycroft whispers against the shell of his ear, just as Sherlock gasps a rather helpless, “I’m sorry.”

He allows himself to pretend that is the first time he has felt like this, that it will be the last, that he and Sherlock both could, in some world, be safe from gunshot wounds and serrated knives. He inhales— Sherlock smells like cigarette smoke, sweat, something else he can’t immediately identify. Mycroft is not generally one for lying to himself, but this time it is all he can do to keep himself sane.

Sherlock is far too pragmatic for that, and he pulls away, hands still clutching Mycroft’s shoulders and shakes his head, just once. He knows what it means— he can’t promise anything.

“I know,” he tells him.

“Because you can’t either.”

Mycroft nods, Sherlock kisses him. Lestrade may see some fraction of what Sherlock means to him, but never anything close to the truth.

—

Their parents start travelling during Christmas holidays. Mycroft is fairly certain their trips are, at least in part, to avoid the yearly struggle of attempting to collect the four of them under one roof. It’s a blessing, intended or not. Sherlock doesn’t do Christmas, he refuses to even see Mycroft, let alone participate in anything remotely reminiscent of childhood tradition. He is fairly certain that Sherlock views Christmas as a reminder of their once tremulous relationship, and thus feels inexplicably resentful towards him for the better part of three days. That, or it reminds him of Mycroft’s equally difficult visits home, and either way, he lets Sherlock have that time to himself.

This year, he indulges. Mycroft sits by the fireplace, whisky in hand, reading Cherry-Gerrard’s account of arctic exploration. It is blissfully silent, until of course, his mobile rings. Detective Inspector Lestrade’s name flashes across the screen.

“So did you two have a row?"

Mycroft takes a sip of his drink. “What makes you ask that?”

“Well Sherlock showed up at my house, for one. On Christmas.” There is the sound of happy chatter in the background, someone laughs, silverware tinkles against china.

“I do hope he hasn’t disturbed you.”

“I sent him up to the spare bedroom with a glass of eggnog and a cold case. The wife’s not delighted with me though.”

His wife is cheating on him, has been for some time, but Mycroft holds his tongue. It is Christmas, after all, and he does love to keep secrets. “I appreciate it.”

Lestrade coughs, rather awkwardly, and Mycroft smiles. “Right, well. Everything’s okay then?"

“We don’t celebrate Christmas. But thank you for checking in. I feel it is only fair to warn you, he will likely attempt to stay the night.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. He mostly keeps out of the way. Might even get him to eat something.”

“That would indeed be a Christmas miracle.”

“Wouldn’t it just."

“Happy Christmas, Detective Inspector.”

Lestrade doesn’t respond and Mycroft returns to his book.

—

Sherlock finds a new flat before they even discuss the possibility of separate living quarters— not that Mycroft doesn’t see it coming, he does, from miles away, Sherlock hasn’t even bothered to hide it.

“It makes sense,” Sherlock says, sprawled across his favourite chaise with a tablet propped up on his chest. “You’re hardly ever home during the day, and I’m out all hours of the night.”

“Not due to necessity,” Mycroft points out, ignoring his brother’s withering glare.

“And,” Sherlock continues loudly. “I want my own place.” He thrives on his own brand of organised chaos, with every room disposable to chemical damage and experiments unhindered by Mycroft’s china cabinets and oil paintings. He understands completely, but that doesn’t mean that he is going to be happy about it. 

“Cheer up, brother dear,” he says, scrolling through sets of realtor photos, flats with empty, bright floors. “I’ll still visit. Or you can come to mine.”

“I know better than to visit a place you might call home, Sherlock.”

He moves into a terraced house just off of Montague Street in March. It is, admittedly, a beautiful flat, in a prime location— he imagines the latter is what called Sherlock to Montague Street in the first place, but Mycroft pays the deposit and a full six months rent with no complaints.

It is still bitter cold, unseasonably so, when Sherlock sweeps through the door with Lestrade in tow. He has his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his windbreaker, and is shouting after Sherlock, voice muffled by the scarf pulled nearly up to his eyes.

“You’re not a fan of spring weather, I take it,” Mycroft says with a smile. Lestrade unwinds his scarf but keeps his coat on.

“This isn’t spring weather.”

Mycroft doesn’t argue. Instead he turns as Sherlock reappears in the doorway, waiting impatiently.

“There really is no need for you to pack. I already offered to pay for a moving company.”

“Don’t need a moving company,” Sherlock huffs. “I have Lestrade.”

“Hey, you never mentioned anything about that when you manhandled me into helping you.”

“I don’t trust them with my equipment,” he says with a wave of his hand. “Come along, Lestrade.”

“I’m gonna kill him one of these days,” he says, pointing rather accusingly in Mycroft’s direction.

“I shan’t blame you.”

It takes them three trips to move everything, using only a cab service as Sherlock had previously refused Mycroft’s offer of a hired car.

“We can do it.” Is all he says in response, as Lestrade sends him pleading looks over Sherlock’s shoulder.

That night, when Mycroft returns home to an empty bed, he forces himself not to think of Sherlock. He is nearly asleep when the soft buzz of his mobile draws him back.

_Expect me at 7:00. There better be breakfast._

—

The first time Mycroft ends up in a hospital it is due not to an assassination attempt, or a negotiation gone array, but to atherosclerosis; cholesterol, all but invisible, blocking oxygen and blood flow. Heart disease is hereditary, with two uncles, an aunt, and a paternal grandfather succumbing to hypertension before the age of sixty. But with a few key changes to his diet and semi-regular exercise, Mycroft is assured that death is far less than imminent.

This scares Sherlock more than a gunshot wound ever could. It is inside of him, an enemy he cannot outsmart or outplay. He is out of his depth and it is devastating.

When Mycroft returns home from the hospital, Sherlock comes with him and refuses to leave his bed for three full days. He lays in one of Mycroft’s dressing gowns, buried in his duvet, and reads medical journals front to back. It is so childish and predictable that Mycroft takes a half week off to join him. He presses his bare chest to Sherlock’s back and sighs into the hair on his neck as Sherlock taps his fingers to the beat of Mycroft’s wayward heart.

On Thursday he receives a text from Lestrade saying simply _Haven’t seen Sherlock._

Mycroft sends a perfunctory _He’s with me_ and receives no response in return.

“Exactly how common are these little updates?” Sherlock asks. His venomous huff loses some of its bite when he is curled naked between Mycroft’s legs, with his cheek pressed to his collarbone.

“He only writes me when he is worried about you.”

“He’s always worried about me.” Sherlock nips the skin at the base of his neck and Mycroft smiles.

“We have that in common.”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I’ve never-”

“You called him mindless.”

Mycroft runs a hand through Sherlock’s hair. It is greasy and unwashed, and he is able to smooth it back along his forehead. “He adores you,” he says.

“That’s all it takes to win you over these days, is it?”

“More or less.” Sherlock smiles against his skin.  

—

Sherlock is clean for a year and three months until he gets dragged under in a manslaughter case involving thousands of illegal morphine patches stolen from a pharmaceutical warehouse in Romford. When he falls, he leaves himself no slack— cocaine cut with fentanyl, rubbed along his gum line, snorted off of the granite counter top in his dealer’s flat. When he finally comes down enough to feel the barest hint of regret, it’s not Mycroft he crawls home to.

“Yes?” He is irritable and impatient and Lestrade is a slow speaker. It has not been a particularly easy 48 hours— Mycroft’s speciality lies in eventualities, but even his calculations couldn’t account for an American tomahawk missile sent two miles off course into a Pakistani school in Kunar.

“You ought to come by, Holmes. Sherlock just got here coked out of his mind.”

“When?” It’s a useless question, barely even a response, but it’s all Mycroft can think to ask. Sherlock has been good— unusually so. They spend their weekends together, tangled in bed sheets. Mycroft cooks full meals in an attempt to get Sherlock to eat something with nutritional value, Sherlock picks out old movies for him to fall asleep to and for Mycroft to adore. He was sure his brother was past this, and he is so rarely wrong.

“About an hour ago. Begged me not to call you, but he’s also gone and locked himself in my bedroom and refuses to let me in so I thought, fuck it.”

“I will be there in twenty minutes. Don’t let him leave.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo, mate.”

Mycroft hangs up without responding.  

When he arrives at Lestrade’s house, he brushes past him at the door and makes directly for the bedroom, ignoring his shout of, “you could’ve knocked!”

“Sherlock,” he says softly, placing his palm to the wood. It feels familiar, pleading with his brother from the other side of a locked door.

“I told him not to call you.” His voice is muffled, far away, likely crowded into the corner at the other side of Lestrade’s bed.

“You know better than that.” He keeps his voice even, as best he can. Mycroft never once flinched or faltered while watching the death toll in Kunar rise in meeting rooms filled with political officials fully aware that he planned the air strike. But Sherlock can tear him apart in a way that anonymous, still lungs never could. “Now will you please open the door?” He isn’t certain what Sherlock’s endgame is here, though he imagines it involves Mycroft leaving him with his dignity in tact, to come down in relative peace. Even with the blunt effects of cocaine, he is far too intelligent for that.

“Sherlock.”

“Just go away, Mycroft,” he grinds out through what must be gritted teeth— from pain or annoyance, Mycroft isn’t sure. “I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

Mycroft’s response is cut off by a hand gripping his shoulder.

“Maybe it’s best to let him do this on his own. I have coffee waiting in the kitchen.” Lestrade is using his good-cop voice, the one he reserves for the family members of victims, for children, for people who need help. Never has he been on the receiving end of Lestrade’s particular brand of comfort, and he turns, eyebrows raised in question.

“That’s what he’s trying to do, you know, sort it out without your help.” He coughs and rubs his thumb and index finger along his ear lobe, where a piercing once was, years before. “Sorry,” he says. “I can’t just turn it off. I know you’re not exactly-“

“I would appreciate a cup of coffee.”

“Yeah, right. Alright. Follow me.”

Lestrade’s kitchen screams at him from the doorway— recently separated, not divorced, personalised mugs left on their shelves, pads of paper with his wife’s handwriting litter countertops, a recent change, trial run as they would say, he’s not taking it well, unwashed dishes, the coffee pot has not been cleaned this week— Mycroft forces himself not to think about it. The many neat collages of photographs on the refrigerator, nieces, nephews, cousins, meticulous and artistic draws him in the direction of fertility issues, a glance at Lestrade upgrades infertility to differing opinions on the benefits of child rearing. This trial separation will likely be finalised with lawyers and a decree nisi.

It feels, for just a moment, like he is a teenager again, when the only thing that would bring sleep was mindless repetition. _Clamo, clamare, clamavi, clamatus._

_“_ Listen, this is a good thing, alright? It means he’s taking responsibility, which God knows he’s a bit lacking.” Lestrade sits a mug of black, watery coffee in front of him. “So have a drink, calm yourself down, and head back home knowing that I’m here if Sherlock collapses in on himself.” He winces. “Okay, I didn’t mean it like that. Just, if anything happens, I can and will help him through it.”

Mycroft has no way to communicate the sudden, all consuming fear that Sherlock no longer needs him, or worse, wants him. Perhaps this relapse is not as standard as it seems. It is an odd thing, second-guessing oneself, especially for a man who rarely cares enough to do so. “Thank you for the coffee,” he says.

—

When Mycroft comes home from work the next day nearly every single light in his house is on. Amid the yellow glow of all three of his sitting room lamps, he finds Sherlock looking sour and ill with greasy, unkempt hair, curled on the couch with his back to the doorway.

“This seems unnecessary,” Mycroft comments, tugging the chain on the nearest standing light.

“I’m not going to rehab.” His voice his raw and cracking.

“Then would you like to explain what happened?” He takes a seat on the half chaise; close enough to be of comfort, should he need it, far enough to provide space. It’s like dealing with a wounded animal, and Mycroft has far more to lose from a misstep.

“I relapsed.”

“You are human.” It feels like they are cursed to repeat this conversation, this heartbreaking dance where Sherlock falls before Mycroft is able to catch him.

Sherlock laughs then, and turns to face him. “I can’t depend on you for everything,” he says.

“I know.” Though he doesn’t, not really. He would give Sherlock the world, if he would just accept it. 

“Lestrade is an idiot-”

“Oh most definitely.”

“But he was right that I need to do this on my own, at least sometimes. So I’m not,” he waves a hand above his head, “brooding or ashamed or doubting you. It’s just a work in progress.”

“Everything is a work in progress with you,” he admits.

Sherlock snorts and turns back to face the sofa.

“Did you come here alone?”

“Lestrade insisted on chaperoning,” his voice is muffled but no less dramatic.

“Thank him for me,” he says. 

“I will do no such thing.”

—

“You’ve barely lived there a year, Sherlock,” Mycroft says, only half reading the email his assistant had sent him. Sherlock takes up far too much of his attention, a natural reaction to the pitch of his voice.

“Yes but I’ve found a better one.”

He glances over the screen of his laptop. “Better than a seventeen hundred a month flat on Montague Street?”

“Upper Montague Street,” he corrects him. “And this one is on Baker Street.”

Mycroft rolls his eyes, Sherlock ignores him. “Closer to the tube-“

“By a block.”

“Plus I got a deal on rent. I know the landlady.”

“Rent I will not be paying if you break your lease at Montague Street."

Sherlock frowns. “But there’s only three months left.”

Mycroft can feel a headache coming on. Sherlock has been staying with him nearly every night since he relapsed, a full two and a half weeks by his count. The anxiety of withdrawal means he hasn’t been sleeping well, plagued with restless limbs and itchy skin and never ending thoughts. Sherlock hasn’t been sleeping, which means Mycroft hasn’t either. He closes his eyes, for just a moment, to block out the glare of sunlight through the window. He really needs a darker home office. He hears Sherlock stand, the shifting, delicate sound of his silk dressing grown against leather, and seconds later cold fingers are rubbing soothing circles just above his temples.

“Headache?” He asks softly.

He sighs at Sherlock’s touch. “Only just.”

“I’m sorry,” his lips brush along his right ear. “I’ll talk to you about it later.”

“It’s not-” Mycroft begins, opening his eyes.

“I know. It’s okay.” Sherlock is smiling. “I’ll convince you to pay my rent over dinner.”

Mycroft rolls his eyes because he knows he will.

—

When John Watson marches into Sherlock’s life with his military bearing and doctor’s predilection, Mycroft is relieved. He gains another ally in the defence of his brother, now three men and one rather elderly landlady strong.

Lestrade still considers Mycroft to be more or less a robot with a short circuit where Sherlock is concerned. But John meets Sherlock first, and to him, Mycroft is an older brother to be handled with understanding and just a hint of amusement. It is a breath of fresh air, and when Sherlock crawls into his bed at half past one on Saturday morning, and whispers against his lips, he tells him so.

“He still lives with me,” he says, pressing his ear to Mycroft’s chest, counting his resting heart rate with tiny metronome taps of his fingers against his hip. “So I guess you approve.”

“He’s a good man.”

“Better than the both of us I’m afraid.”

Mycroft smiles into his hair. “Oh, heavens yes.”

“Not hard to manage,” Sherlock says rather airily, as he shifts a few inches to drag his tongue along his neck, biting gently at his earlobe with his tips of his incisors.

“No, not particularly.” He sighs.

“I don’t mind.” Sherlock kisses him slowly, uncharacteristically patient, languid, and Mycroft sighs into his mouth.

“Nor do I.”

—

“John asked me about you today.”

Mycroft is sitting in Lestrade’s office, tinkering with a metal desk puzzle that Sergeant Donavan had given him. It has laid in pieces since Lestrade opened it months before and Mycroft decided to take time out of his busy schedule to solve it for him. It took less than thirty seconds, but he is in the process of cataloguing every permutation, mostly to annoy Lestrade as much as physically possible.

“Oh really.” He doesn’t look up.

“Wanted to know how well I knew you.”

Mycroft snorts as he slips the last piece into place— solution number four.

“Told him you were a bit dodgy.”

“Such high praise coming from you.” Mycroft says, setting it back down on Lestrade’s desk. “I’m certain you were convincing.”

“I also told him that when it comes to Sherlock, your heart is nearly always in the right place.”

“What heart?” He asks with raised eyebrows as he reaches for his umbrella.

Lestrade stands to see him out, with a slight slant to his mouth that could pass for a smile. “You know the one, Holmes.”

—

Mycroft traces every inch of Sherlock’s back with the tips of his fingers. His skin is smooth and pale, save for a pattern of moles beneath his right shoulder blade— beauty marks, he would call them, constellations.

“‘M sleeping.” Sherlock mumbles into his pillow.

“I love you,” he whispers in return.

Sherlock rolls to the side, and catches his hand, pressing his palm to his lips. “Well now look what you’ve done.” His voice is still thick with sleep, his eyes half-lidded, squinting through the blue-green glow of the television.

Mycroft brushes his thumb along the curve of his cheekbone, Sherlock swipes his tongue against his palm in retaliation. “What have I done?”

“Woken me up."


End file.
